Providers

This network offers interpretation services to patients and providers at eligible public hospitals in California. Trained health care interpreters operate in 16 languages through an automated video/voice call center.

This report uses data from a Medical Board of California survey to measure physician participation in the Medi-Cal program and examine differences across specialties and regions. It finds that low participation rates are a continuing problem and discusses the implications for low-income patients.

This report looks at California's physicians in terms of supply relative to population, the types of patients served, physician demographics, education and training, compensation, and other factors.

The nation's current oral health workforce fails to meet the needs of many segments of the population, particularly those in rural and other underserved areas. Read the findings from a February 2009 IOM workshop on this issue.

By improving patient flow, community clinics can facilitate better patient access as well as higher provider and patient satisfaction. A project to help over 40 California clinic teams achieve better patient flow is evaluated in this issue brief.

Two California clinics have built welcoming, spacious facilities centered around community wellness and efficient, evidence-based care. Both facilities greatly expanded the types of services they offer.

Training clinic staff and providers in the use of an electronic health record (EHR) system provides an opportunity to get the most out of the technology and also improve patient care.

In operation since 2005, this project is designed to identify pressing health workforce and health professions' issues in California. The project's areas of interest include: language access, community clinic staffing, and oral health workforce shortages.

This $1.5 million initiative will develop a prototype community infrastructure and tools to support the adoption, integration, and meaningful use of EHRs for small medical practices and test the model in up to 20 primary care practices in Tulare County.

These tools describe the SPeDesign model and outline the roles and responsibilities of organizations that would like to help small practices adopt and make meaningful use of EHRs and data-driven improvements. Included are assessment tools, FAQ, technical guides, checklists, and a playbook.

California's 512 acute care hospitals cared for 3 million inpatients and 42 million outpatients in 2007. This report examines these hospitals in terms of their bed supply and capacity, geographic distribution, ownership type, utilization, and financial health.

An issue brief reports on the impact, challenges, and lessons learned from a redesign project to expand specialty-care access for patients in a Los Angeles network of community clinics. A second report provides an independent evaluation of the project.

Clinical documentation within electronic health records systems attempts to balance the uniformity of pre-determined choices with the flexibility to capture subtle information. It aims to make documentation fast, precise, and complete.

Entering clinical data from paper files into electronic health records (EHRs) causes a temporary loss in clinic productivity. In this issue brief, networks of community clinics share insights about effective chart abstraction.

California's critical access hospitals, which play a crucial role in rural and remote areas, can be strongly affected by market shifts. This research looks at the financial health of these small institutions on a variety of dimensions and identifies strong determinants of financial performance.